A stenosis represents a narrowing of a body vessel. In the case of a blood vessel, the blood flow, (in other words, the hemodynamics), is impaired by the stenosis. Serial stenoses are several stenoses arranged behind one another upstream or downstream in the body vessel. If a physician wants to treat such stenoses, they may start with the most influential or most significant stenosis. For example, the blood vessel in the region of the stenosis may be supported or widened by a stent. Today, invasive FFR measurement, (for example, by a pressure wire), is standard in the assessment of the hemodynamic significance of stenoses. If two or more serial stenoses are present in a vascular section or vascular segment, although the integral FFR value (e.g., the overall value) may be measured invasively, a measurement of the individual FFR values of each individual stenosis is only possible with very great additional measuring effort or not at all.
A question important for clinical decision-making in the case of several consecutive stenoses is, however, that of the individual FFR value of the individual stenoses.
Instead of an invasive FFR measurement, a so-called virtual FFR measurement may also be performed, which non-invasively ascertains a FFR value based on geometric information, which may be acquired from several angiography images. For this purpose, the method of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is known from the prior art.